Builder’s latest concept home delivers performance and style to production housing.

The Builder Concept Home 2011, slated to debut as both an actual home in conjunction with the upcoming International Builders’ Show in Orlando, Fla., and as a virtual-home experience online, is a model of how and why a production home can achieve a superior level of sustainability while remaining affordable to build and buy.

The 2,667-square-foot, single-level home boasts KB Home as its builder and engages lifestyle authority Martha Stewart to add her sensible, livable, and increasingly eco-friendly style to the project.

Integrated into its good looks is an impressive lineup of energy and resource efficiencies, from a tight, durable shell and Energy Star- and Water-Sense-labeled products to a host of recycled-content and low-VOC finishes. A pair of sleek, roof-mounted solar thermal collectors serve the home’s domestic hot water needs. A 9kw array of roof-integrated solar panels entirely offset the power grid and helped the home to a HERS rating of less than zero in energy-use modeling.

KB Home is seeking the Environments for Living Certified Green label and LEED for Homes Platinum certification for the house—and yet it will price it in the mid-200s as a first move-up home. “It’s an opportunity to show our buyers that a home can be affordable, functional, and stylish,” says George Glance, president of KB Home’s Central Florida division.

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